Heavenly Holst - What "The Planets" Means to Me as a Composer and as a Performer

Image Credit: Nasa.gov

An enjoyable and accessible piece of music, The Planets is a 7-movement suite that every composer wishes they'd written. But what about the performers - do they enjoy performing the work as much as audiences like to hear it?


This work, written between 1914 and 1916, was premiered in 1918 for an audience of about 250 people. It was written to have an astrological (not astronomical as many assume, which is why planet Earth is left out) meaning, specifically focusing on how the planets effect us. Gustav Holst was an astrology enthusiast, and was happy to write out horoscopes for all his friends.

I bet he was that friend who shakes his head and says, "Oooh, I know - Mercury is in retrograde" when you would have a bad week at work or got dumped by your latest paramour.

He originally wrote The Planets for two pianos, with the seventh movement, Neptune, scored for a single organ. He rescored the work for orchestra, and that decision cemented the work into music history

The first full performance didn't take place until 1920 - all previous public performances had ended with Jupiter to give it a happy ending, which Holst didn't like, because as he said, "In the real world, the end is not happy at all."

As a composer, 

I admire Holst's work and aspire to write music that is accessible, enjoyable, and most importantly, popular. I know some hipster composers would argue that popular doesn't mean good - but as someone who lives in the real world, I know that getting paid is better than having an empty bank account. We all sell out, sooner or later, if we want to make a career in music.

The Planets is engaging and plays to the workings of our minds, which seek patterns, repetition, and resolution above everything else in music. Each movement brings enough freshness and new material that as a listener, you never get bored throughout the entire 50 minute performance. As a composer, I want to emulate that kind of experience for an audience.

Holst's orchestrations, which take influence from Rimsky-Korsokov (who wrote a fantastic treatise on orchestration principles that you can get for FREE as an ebook from Amazon), are clean but powerful, and use each instrument to its strengths, something every composer should aim for. There's nothing worse than heading into a rehearsal with a new piece and having your oboist gawp at you with huge, terrified eyes, as they tell you that their part is all but completely unplayable in some (or all) respects.

As a performer,

I appreciate the inclusion of the alto flute. We flautists rarely get a chance to show off our shiny lower flutes, which are so very expensive! 

As a singer, I want to know why, in 2014, it's necessary to have a women's choir smashed into an adjacent hallway to sing the last movement, while a door is shut to finalize the fade out that Holst intended (which was, incidentally, one of the first instances of a fade out in orchestral music). It is a fantastic effect, to be sure, but the claustrophobia of tiny hallways certainly puts a damper on my mood. 

I find that the tone clusters in Neptune can be difficult to navigate, especially in cramped quarters when most of your brain power is spent not hyperventilating and trying to avoid sweating. The repetition in the parts makes it manageable, but I am curious as to how a girl's choir from St. Paul's School handled the movement for its premiere in 1918. 

The sometimes awkward voice leading makes me consider smooth transitions when writing choral music, which is why I can never truly separate my composer brain from my performer brain. Learned experiences in rehearsal lead to alterations in the way I write music and how I instruct ensembles who rehearse my music. 

I felt inspired to write this post because I am in rehearsals to sing the Neptune movement with the London Philharmonic women's semi-chorus for Prom 56 on August 28th - which you should definitely come and see if you're in the neighborhood!